Re: Publishers - your thoughts on jobs for your authors and review=

[David Prosser <david.prosser@rluk.ac.uk>]

I suspect that 'publishing consultant believes publishing 
revenues reasonable' would be no more a headline than 'library 
representative believes them excessive'.  But it is interesting 
to compare and contrast what one is getting for the money.

The average rejection rate over all the journals in a big deal 
package is not hugely different to the average PLoS One rejection 
rate (running at 30-50% compared to about 30%, respectively), so 
the question of whether or not a paper should be published isn't 
the key question.  What the big deals do is sort the papers into 
journals.  And they do that at the price of restricting who has 
access and what can be done with the papers by those who do have 
access, plus being 2.5 times as expensive.  Doesn't sound like a 
great bargain.

And Joe says they system works.  Well, in another thread we are 
discussing how libraries are moving away from the big deals, so 
reducing the total amount of access.  Perhaps the system is 
beginning to show signs of strain?

David



On 2 Jul 2011, at 03:35, Joseph Esposito wrote:

> I would think using David's approach, one would conclude that 
> Elsevier is a bargain.  I don't happen to agree with this 
> approach, though, so I won't make that assertion.
>
> The merit of the traditional approach, of which Elsevier is the 
> exemplar, is not in making material available (the core tenet 
> of OA), but in making an assertion of what is and is not worth 
> putting any time into.  PLOS One proceeds from the opposite 
> impulse, that the idea of a publisher attempting to shape the 
> direction of research is inappropriate.
>
> No reason we can't have both--and we do.  Over time these two 
> approaches will diverge even further in the kinds of material 
> they work with.  It takes a while for a new medium to find its 
> voice, and PLOS One is a new medium.
>
> The traditional model works in its way; the author-pays model 
> of PLOS One and a slew of other services works in its way. 
> It's only the so-called Green model that doesn't work, as it 
> undermines the economics of the traditional model, on which it 
> depends.
>
> Why not simply let authors choose where they want to publish, 
> assuming they make the grade?  Isn't that a reasonable 
> consideration, that the people doing the creative work have 
> some say in how it is handled?
>
> Joe Esposito